GRIDCo Suffers Ghc31 Million Loss
National power transmission company, Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) balanced its books for the 2017 financial year into the negatives, recording a loss of ghc31million.
The loss was incurred mainly because of defaults by its key customers in paying for supplies made to them, and also the assumption of debts owed by the Volta River Authority.
The loss announcement was one of the highlights of GRIDCo’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) which came off today in Accra.
Explaining the loss, the company whose Board of Directors is chaired by Amb. Kabral Blay Amihere, said GRIDCo actually recorded revenue improvement over the previous years, (2016) revenue performance. 2017’s revenue accruals amounted to ghc715.2 million, a 6.14% improvement over 2016’s ghc673, 835 million.
Despite this however, key customers of GRIDCo did not retire debts owed to the company in the same year. Also, interests on costs of loans contracted for the West Africa Power Pool (WAPP), which previously were in the books of the VRA, were transferred to GRIDCo.
Also, in 2017, GRIDCo incurred transmission losses of 0.59TWh, which was equal to 4.10% of total energy transmitted.
“These and other limitations resulted in a Net Loss of Ghc31.00M in 2017,” a statement signed by GRIDCo’s Head of Public Relations, Albert Kwesi Quainoo, said. No mention was made of how GRIDCo intends to get its key clients to pay up the debt owed.
Meanwhile, in the same year the national Grid recorded its peak demand of 2192.15 MW on November 13, 2017, representing a 9.77% increment compared to the 1997MW recorded on November 29, 2016.
In 2017, GRIDCo transmitted a total of 14.31 Terawatt hours (TWh) of energy on its transmission network. Out of this, the net energy consumed locally was 12.71 TWh. 0.32 TWh of energy was imported from La Cote D’Ivoire and 0.13 TWh was exported to SONABEL, Youg Mines, Burkina Faso and CIE. 13.99TWh was recorded as the net total energy generated in Ghana.
GRIDCo is exclusively licensed to operate the National Interconnected Transmission System. It owns and operates about 5,216 circuit km of high voltage transmission lines across the country, mainly operated at 161 KV. The other transmission voltages are 69 kV, 225 kV and 330kV.
Source: Ghanaiandemocrat.com
